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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LOUISIANA-TEXAS 

FRONTIER 

By Isa.\c Joslin Cox 

As commonly used the word ''frontier", indicating 
one of the most important geographical factors of his- 
tory, has two distinct meanings ; first, that of the indefi- 
nite line which divides the civilized and settled portions of 
the country from its savage wilderness area ; and, in the 
second place, the metes and bounds which separate dif- 
ferent nationalities. Both of these meanings are empha- 
sized in the frontier which is our immediate subject. 

The frontier is concerned with certain physiographic 
factors — rivers and lakes, plains and plateaus, marshes 
and mountains — that add definiteness to differing na- 
tional elements. These physical elements in turn are 
supplemented by human agencies, and of these we may 
distinguish two important groups: the men who at the 
forefront bear the brunt of the national struggle for ex- 
pansion or self-defense; and the rear guard, composed 
of legislators, executives, or diplomats who strive to make 
sure of the national prestige won by the former, and who 
often unjustly obtain credit for the other's work. 

Most frontiers soon or late seem likewise to pass 
through three distinct stages of development. The first 
we may designate as the period of definition, when the 
various elements that enter into the international play of 
forces are making themselves felt and are roughly point- 
ing out lines to be marked out by future wars or diplom- 
acy. The second is the stage of delimitation, when the 
above roughly suggested spheres of influence are made 
more certain by fixed boundaries, following more or less 




closely defined national or physiographic areas. The 
third period may be termed the period of demolition, when 
irresistible influences break through the barriers erected 
by war or diplomacy, and spreading into regions beyond 
bring once more into play upon another frontier area the 
forces of the two earlier periods. 

It is in Europe that we naturally find the best ex- 
amples for frontier study. Here for more than a thou- 
sand years German and Slavic or German and Latin ele- 
ments have waged unending wars in the effort to mark 
definite limits for national or racial units. Through the 
long centuries monarchs planned, diplomats schemed, 
armies fought, and settlers migrated in the attempt to 
make natural boundaries and racial elements correspond 
in the upbuilding of national aspirations. Lothringia 
gives way before the irrestible advance of Austria-Neus- 
tria; or a thousand years later, Alsace and Lorraine fall 
to the German in order to redress the balance of Western 
Europe. Poland disappears as a separate entity under 
the pressure of Muscovite, Hapsburg, and Hohenzolleni. 
The Alps and the Pyrennes separate the Latin nations, 
despite the ambitious attempts of Charles VIII and Fran- 
cis I, the boast of Louis XIV, or the decree of Napoleon. 
These significant examples, to say nothing of a host of 
minor ones, illustrate the general statements already 
mentioned; but they have their counterparts in the New 
World where, upon a territorial and physiographic scale 
greater than Europe affords, the three stages of develop- 
ment are compressed within a time limit that permits a 
rapid survey of their significant features. Of such North 
American frontiers we might name the Maine-Acadian of 
our Northeastern border, the old New York frontier, the 
Oregon frontier, that of the Old Northwest, and that of the 
far Southwest — all of which illustrate the points men- 
tioned as vividly as any of their European counterparts. 
But for the purpose of our present study I have selected 



one that surpasses all in the charm of its history, in the 
importance of the problems which it presents, and in its 
apt illustration of the various features of frontier life - 
the Louisiana-Texas frontier — to which we will now turn. 
In considering the setting of the Louisana-Texas 
frontier, we naturally begin with its extent. In this con- 
nection we may asume that "frontier" means the entire 
area upon which the physiographic and human elements 
already mentioned play their part. In that sense I feel 
justified in defining the Louisiana-Texas frontier area in 
its widest extent as including all that irregular parallelo- 
gram between the Lower Mississippi and the Rio Grande, 
and extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rocky 
Mountains. Such an extent would enable one to include 
within the limits of this sketch the fruitless search of 
Coronado for Quivira, and the dream of Friar Alonso 
Benavides of opening communication between that ob- 
scure land and the equally uncertain bay of Espiritu San- 
to ; the death scene of La Salle on the Trinity, and of his 
assassin, L'Archeveque, in the country of the Pawnee In- 
dians; the joyful cheers of Pike's men on first beholding 
the Mexican mountains in Colorado, and their still more 
exultant salute of the American flag flying over Fort 
CJaibourne at Natchitoches; the unsuccessful attempt of 
Spain to establish her supremacy east of the Sabine, and 
the failure of Texas to extend her dominion over Santa 
Fe; the operations of the '^ Commerce of the Prairies" 
over the old Santa Fe trail, and the clandestine dealings 
of French smugglers and traders with the Spanish set- 
tlers and neophytes of Texas ; the advance of Wilkinson 
to the Sabine, or of Taylor to the Rio Grande; the en- 
trada of De Aguayo into eastern Texas and western 
Louisiana, or the march of Kearney and Doniphan into 
New Mexico and Chihuahua; the pushing of American 
squatters into the valley of the Red and Washita, and 
the difficulty of retaining Canary Island pohladores on 



the banks of tlie San x\ntonio. All of these factors and 
many more might properly be included in a study sug- 
gested by our title, for all have profoundly influenced 
the history of this frontier area. But definiteness will 
lead us to restrict the field of our study largely to the ter- 
ritory between the Red and Sabine rivers, where mission 
and presidio, trading post and frontier fort, rancheria 
and maison, dotted over the prairies and marshes, or 
marking convenient ford and ferry indicated the respect- 
ive advances of European agent, French or Spanish Cre- 
ole, American planter or filibuster, Mexican dictator or 
exiled revolutionist. 

In speaking of the physiographic elements that char- 
acterize this frontier area, one naturally first mentions 
the two rivers so conspicuous in the history of Louisiana 
and Texas — the Red and the Sabine. Although now 
merely of local importance, the Red has often been sug- 
gested as a possible connecting link for a transcontinental 
highway, while the Sabine has more than once achieved 
the dignity of an international boundary. In the course 
of his negotiations with G. W. Irving the Spanish Min- 
ister of State, Pizarro, gravely insisted upon confusing 
the Red with the Colorado of Texas, ^ while at a later per- 
iod our Mexican charge, Butler, tried as solemnly to 
''mystify" the Mexican Alaman by suggesting a possible 
confusion between the Sabine and the Sabinas, a small 
tributary of the Rio G-rande.^ The possibilities of either 
as an international limit were at one time passed by in 
favor of a still more unimportant stream, the Arroyo 
Hondo, a small bayou flowing into the Red near Natchi- 
toches. This small stream, first selected by the tacit agree- 
ment of frontier officials, was destined more than once 

1 House Executive Document No. S77, 28th Congress, 1st Session, p. 
46; Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IV, p. 80. 

* Mexican Dispatches, Butler to Livingston, No. .32, .July 16, 1832, in 
the Bureau of Indexes and Archives, Department of State. 



to rise to international prominence during ensuing fron- 
tier discussions. In the vicinity of these two main streams 
the country abounded in marshes and swamps, and was 
cut up by numerous bayous, the whole affording an ad- 
mirable opportunity for the French to cany on illicit 
trade with the Texas Indians,^ or, later, for American 
adventurers to smuggle negroes from Galveston Island 
into Louisiana.* Remote from these streams ran the 
mighty flood of the Mississippi, bearing the tide of ex- 
pansion towards the Southwest, and the long drawn out 
but uncertain current of the Rio Grande. Upon the west- 
ern bank of the Red the French, by 1716, had established 
Natchitoches, a trading post and the center of a small 
community of French habitants; and some twenty miles 
distant, across the Arroyo Hondo, stood Adaes, occupied 
by a small presidial guard of Spanish soldiers who were 
supposed to protect a group of languishing Fransciscan 
Missions. Upon the eastern bank of the Mississippi sat 
New Orleans, the capital of French Louisiana; and still 
further to the eastward lay Mobile, the earlier capitalof 
that same province. These two points, forming the rear 
guard of French influence, were matched by the Spanish 
San Antonio de Bexar, about one hundred and fifty miles 
east of the middle course of the Rio Grande, and Chihua- 
hua, about the same distance west of the upper course of 
that river. These places in the contested frontier area 
formed the chief supports of their respective outposts, 
Natchitoches and Adaes — although at different times 
Mexico City and Washington, London, Paris, and Madrid, 
exerted their influence upon the frontier forces, while 
Queretaro, Zacatecas, and Guadalajara profoundly influ- 
enced its religious life. 

3 Bolton's Tlie SpanisJi Abandonment and Seocoupation of East 
Texas, 1773-1779, in The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Assooia- 
tiati, Vol. IX, pp. 67-137. 

♦ Barker's The African Slave Trade in Texas in TJie Quarterly of 
the Texas State Historical Association, Vol. VI, pp. 145-158. 



In this frontier area many conflicting human elements 
working through the various physiographic factors men- 
tioned above played an important part in rounding out 
our national domain. These elements naturally fall into 
two classes, the national factors or agents and individual 
occupation types. Among these national factors we may 
name for France, La Salle, Tonty, St. Denis, and Bien- 
ville ; for Spain, De Leon, Mazanet, De Aguayo, and San- 
doval, or later such adopted subjects as De Mezieres ; and 
for the United States, Nolan, Davenport, Claiborne, Rob- 
inson, Long, of the earlier period, and Austin and Hous- 
ton of the later. Mexico succeeds to the place of Spain ; the 
United States or Texas to the place of France and Great 
Britain ; the Colony of Louisiana becomes the Louisiana 
Purchase and the Internal Provinces are separated from 
the Mexican Viceroyalty; State replaces province and 
county succeeds ayuntamiento; but the struggle along the 
frontier continues despite change in political unit or na- 
tional allegiance. From the standpoint of individual oc- 
cupation, explorer and missionary, conquistador and pre- 
sidial commander are balanced by French voyageur and 
habitant, fur-trader and Indian agent. The struggles of 
the earlier period between these typical frontier factors 
are continued at a later period when American and Mex- 
ican, pioneer and explorer, filibuster or revolutionist, 
squatter and settler, insecure official and unready subject 
continue the struggle for supremacy. With these human 
elements playing upon the physiographic factors there is 
presented for our view a bit of border history that suf- 
fers in comparison with no other area between conflicting 
civilizations. 

These agents on the frontier are supplemented, and 
in many cases apparently overshadowed by the legis- 
lators and diplomats of the various capitals ; and although 
the annals of legislation and diplomacy seem unusually 
full in comparison with those offered by the frontiersmen, 



yet it is to the latter that we ultimately owe the presei-va- 
tion of the Louisiana-Texas frontier area and our ulti- 
mate expansion to the westward. 

Having mentioned some of the factors which ]3layed 
a momentous part in the development of the Louisiana- 
Texas frontier, it may be well to consider for the remain- 
der of this paper the significant features of its history 
through the three periods which mark its successive 
stages of development. The first of these to be consid- 
ered is that which we choose to call "T/ie Period of Defi- 
nition ' ', and in the history of our particular frontier this 
may be regarded as extending to 1760, when we meet with 
the first definite suggestion of the Sabine as a possible 
international limit,^ For more than two centuries before 
this date the Spaniards had been gradually advancing 
from Mexico City to the north and northeast. In the Val- 
ley of the Upper Rio Grande, Coronado, Espejo, Onate, 
and Benavides, marked by their careers successive stages 
of Spanish advance to the Rio Q-rande and beyond, which 
Friar Alonzo Posades in 1685 fittingly summarized ; but 
in that very year the Frenchman, La Salle, made his un- 
fortunate landing upon the coast of Texas and presented 
himself as a competitor for the region between the Mis- 
sissippi and the Rio Grande. His death removed im- 
mediate peril to the Spanish claims, but Spanish entradas 
from 1689 to 1693 emphasized the fears which the vice 
regal court felt towards French aggression. Then, de- 
spite the efforts of the frontier commander and mission- 
ary, the Spanish rulers lost their interest in Texas and 
abandoned the territory to the aborigines. After twenty 
years' silence French traders once more arouse the Span- 
ish court from its lethargy, and after 1716 a new series 

5 The detailed references to the sources upon which this sketch of 
border history, up to 1803, is based will be found in an article by the 
present writer entitled The Lovisdana- Texas Frontier, in The Quarterly of the 
Texas State Historical Association, Vol. X, pp. 1-75. 



of Spanish entradas establish the hold of that govern- 
ment upon eastern Texas. Prom this date the French 
at Natchitoches and the Spaniards at Adaes face each 
other as representatives of uncertain territorial claims, 
on the one side to the Rio Grande and on the other to the 
Mississippi. Each, however, is led by dynastic or frontier 
conditions to tolerate the other, with the result that mid- 
way between their respective fortifications they select a 
small stream, the Arroyo Hondo, to mark their respective 
local jurisdictions. As no other important settlements 
exist to the north or to the south of this point other des- 
ignated limits are unnecessary, although those officials 
who look forward to the future perceive the necessity of 
some such delimitation if hostile collision is to be averted. 
Occasional controversies arise between frontier subalt- 
erns or Spanish viceroy and French governor; and as a 
result of one of these in the late fifties. Governor Martos 
y Navarrete of Texas makes the first suggestion of the 
Sabine, in connection with the Red and the Missouri, as 
one of the possible limits for dividing French and Spanish 
possessions in America.* His suggestion remains un- 
heeded for forty years, because the exigencies of the fam- 
ily compact and of the Seven Years' War throw Louisiana 
into Spanish keeping ; but the mention of the Sabine has 
a significance which the future clearly reveals and we may 
take this suggestion and its probable date, 1760, as the 
time when the first period of our frontier history, that of 
Definiiion, properly comes to a close. 

In entering upon the second period of this frontier 
history, that of Delimitation, it may reasonably seem that 
after 1762 there is no reason for marking a definite bound- 
ary between Louisiana and Texas. Both are now under 

6 The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Assooiation, Vol. X, 
pp. 24-26. The proposed delimitation ia given in Volume XLIII, Secoion 
de Historia, Archive General, Mexico, in which volimie it comprisea some 
nineteen paragraphs of Document LXX. 



Spanish dominion, or at least shortly to be so, and the 
necessity for keeping them separate would seem a tiling 
of the past. Such, however, is not the view of the Span- 
ish government. Louisiana is a Spanish colony, but one 
enjoying certain commercial privileges that are not to 
extend to other Spanish colonies, and in order to preserve 
the wall of Spanish commercial exclusion elsewhere, the 
frontier line separating Louisiana and Texas is to be 
emphasized, not obliterated. During this period of de- 
limitation, so far as definite Spanish policy is concerned, 
local officials suggest two methods of procedure. In 1767 
the Marques de Rubi makes an inspection of Texas forts 
and missions. He now perceives that the important front- 
ier problem is that of protecting the interior civilization 
of Mexico against the flood of native barbarism, and for 
this purpose he suggests an abandonment of eastern 
Texas and a concentration of Spanish strength upon the 
San Antonio and Rio Grande rivers. An opposite policy 
is suggested by a Frenchman in Spanish service, Athan- 
acio de Mesieres, who believes in meeting these problems 
of civilization against barbarism by extending at the same 
time the line of national defense. He suggests advancing 
into the Indian territory with a cordon of forts running 
from the Mississippi through Santa Fe to the Pacific. In 
this way he would not only control the barbarian Indians 
on the north, but also check any encroachment of the Eng- 
lish from the east of the Mississippi. 

For ten years these two policies ran counter to each 
other at Chihuahua and at Vera Cruz, at New Orleans 
and Mexico, at Seville and at Madrid. The Mexican Vice- 
roy attempts to compel the abandonment of eastern Tex- 
as; the Texas Governor with the encouragement of his 
Louisiana colleague thwarts his efforts and permits the 
continued occupation of that region. As a result of this 
struggle the Indians continue their depredations upon 
the Mexican settlements ; clandestine commerce flourishes 



10 

in the eastern part of Texas ; English traders, abetted by 
French Creoles from Louisiana, at will visit the unsub- 
dued Indians ; and the close of the century witnesses the 
arrival of a more dreaded element, the American fron- 
tiersman. Philip Nolan, the filibuster and horse trader, 
and Samuel Davenport, ranchman and Indian factor, are 
typical representatives of this last national element, and 
they arouse the resentment equally of the Spanish Gov- 
ernor in Texas and of the French Bishop of Louisiana. 
These point out the danger of this new migration, in view 
of the unsettled frontier conditions; but despite their 
warnings and the counsel of those who had preceded them, 
the frontier line remains unmarked, while the reactionary 
authorities rigidly adhere to their policy of separating 
Louisiana and Texas. 

With the transfer of Louisiana to France and later 
to the United States, all previous questions regarding the 
frontier are revived, together with many new ones sug- 
gesting difficult problems for the immediate future. Ex- 
plorers, unauthorized settlers, illegal traders, negro 
slaves — the last introducing a new problem in this re- 
gion — all arouse the fears of the Spanish frontier com- 
manders; while their superiors at Mexico or at Madrid 
perceive too late the importance of earlier suggestions for 
fixing a definite boundary at the Sabine, and unavailingly 
attempt to revive proposals disregarded for more than 
four decades. It was natural that diplomacy should at 
first play an emphatic part in the period of uncertainty 
following the transfer. To this Napoleon had appealed 
to wrest Louisiana from the unwilling Spanish King, and 
he sanctioned the efforts of his foreign agents to embroil 
the United States with its new neighbors. The order of 
Decres and the interpretation of Talleyrand regarding the 
limits of Louisiana were both used in an attempt to bar- 
gain with the United States.^ 

7 See entry for March 16, 1805, in Monroe 'a manuscript Journal in 



n 

Meanwhile, Jefferson and his advisers revive and 
emphasize the earlier claims of France, based on La 
Salle's work, to the country as far westward as the Rio 
Grande ; but, as in the case of his constitutional scruples, 
Jefferson was willing to modify these claims to suit the 
exigencies of the occasion. His agent, Monroe, was ac- 
cordingly instructed to bend all his efforts to acquire the 
Floridas, even at the expense of sacrifices on the western 
frontier.^ The Spanish Ministers of State, deceiving, ca- 
joling, threatening by turns, at last lost interest in all 
questions at issue with the United States in the gloomier 
prospect of absorption in Napoleon's universal empire 
Finally, Charles IV and Godoy, Jefferson and Madison, 
alike form a mere group of tools whose wishes Napoleon 
at will sacrifices to his continental system. 

Meanwhile, on the border, the questions of jurisdic- 
tion, of Indian alliance, of border explorations, of escap- 
ing slaves, and of inter-settlement trade, were all cast 
into the shade by the rumor of Burr's daring project to 
invade the Spanish domains of Mexico; and this year, 
1806, marked a more significant crisis than had hitherto 
threatened the Louisiana-Texas frontier. When, how- 
ever, the unscrupulous Wilkinson betrayed his fellow-con- 
spiritor and formed with Herrera the Neutral Ground 
Convention, the immediate peril to Spanish interest was 
deferred, inasmuch as the American commander, follow- 
ing the instructions of the Washington Cabinet, agreed 
to remain to the eastward of the Arroyo Hondo, thus em- 
phasizing the Franco-Spanish limit of the preceding cent- 
ury ; while the Spaniard was to retire beyond the Sabine, 
which other official writers had already marked out as a 

Spanuh Dispatches, Vol. VIII, Bureau of Indexes and Archives; also the 
letter of Armstrong to Monroe, dated Paris, March 12, 1805, in the Letters 
of James Monroe in the Lenox Branch of the New York Public Library. 

8 Instructions of Madison to Monroe and Pinckney, American State 
Papers, Foreign Belations, Vol. II, pp. 628 ff. 



12 

possible national limit.* Into the intervening neutral 
ground, suj^posedly abandoned by both nations for the 
time being only, but really for fifteen years, there im- 
mediately flocked every species of outlaw, forming a mot- 
ley population that speedily acquired an unsavory repu- 
tation on either side of the line. Thereupon followed a 
most interesting period in American border history, for 
in Mexico there broke out a revolution against the Span- 
ish power with which the majority of American citizens, 
particularly in the Mississippi Valley, thoroughly sympa- 
thized. Thus occurred the unhealthful but natural com- 
bination of the Mexican revolutionist with the American 
filibuster — a combination which proved the source of un- 
numbered woes in American diplomatic annals. Political 
refugees from Mexico, such as Gutierrez and Menchaca " 
found a ready asylum in this neutral zone where no law 
flourished. Here sympathizing American filibusters like 
John H. Robinson'^ and AugTistus McGee ^- readily met 
and conferred with them and planned forays against the 
Spanish power in Texas and Mexico. The Spanish creole 
Toledo, ^'^ and the guerrilla, Mina,'* with their ill-assorted 
followers used it as a point of vantage from which to or- 

sMcCaleb's The Jaro}i Burr Conspiracy, p. 150 ff. 

10 Among the "Letters to and from Ministers, etc." in the East 
Florida Manuscripts, Library of Congress, is an interesting communication 
from the Spanish minister De Onis to Governor Estrada, dated at Phila- 
delphia, January 21, 1812, in vfhieh he mentions the arrival of these two 
men at Natchitoches, Louisiana. 

11 Letters and other documents relating to Robinson are found in 
the manuscript volumes of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, Department 
of State, under the titles "Louisiana and the Southern Boundary," 
"Papeis in Relation to Burr's Conspiracy'', ''Papers Relating to the R*'- 
volted Spanish Colonies ' ', and in the Monroe letters mentioned in Note 7. 

12 For the expedition in which he was associated with Gutierrez, see 
Yoakum's History of Texas, Ch. XII, and McCaleb's The First Period of 
the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition in The Quarterly of the Texas State His- 
torical Association, Vol. IV, pp. 218-229. 

I'i For Toledo, sec tiie sources mentioned in Note 11. 
1* Miscellaneous Letters, Vol. XLIX, Bureau of Indexes and Ar- 
chives, Department of State. 



13 

ganize for war against the Mexican viceroy or to quarrel 
with their ambitious colleagues or rivals. Their resulting 
methods involved the neutrality of the American govern- 
ment/"' compromised Monroe and his subordinates with 
the Spanish authorities, encouraged a general spirit of 
lawlessness and adventure in the southwest, and engen- 
dered on the y)art of both Mexicans and Americans a 
hearty mutual distrust that colored all their subsequent 
relations. When to these elements were added exiled 
officers from Napoleon's armies,^*^ political adventurers 
from South America, land hungry speculators from the 
United States, and former pirates from the Louisiana 
bayous, the confusion which had settled upon this frontier 
became worse confounded.^ ^ 

At Washington and Madrid a continually shifting 
diplomatic policy added to the uncertainty of the frontier 
situation. But after 1817 this diplomacy was wisely di- 
rected with unerring aim by John Quincy Adams; and 
when through the compliance of his associates and of his 
chief, Monroe, he was finally forced to give up American 
claims to Texas,^^ he gained more than double compensa- 
tion in succeeding to all of Spain's claims to the Oregon 
territory. By the Treaty of 1819 he obtained the line of 
the forty-second parallel to the Pacific, and in exchange 
agreed to accept as the western limit of Louisiana and of 
the United States the Sabine River — a limit which a 
Texas Grovernor had suggested sixty years before and 
which was now definitely incorporated in an international 

15 This is shown in the correspondence of Monroe, John Graham, and 
W. C. C. Claiborne as given in the sources mentioned in Note 11 and in 
the volumes of Miscellaneous Letters. 

16 Eosengarten 'a French Colonists and Exiles in America, Ch. XIV; 
Reeve's The Napoleonic Exiles in America; and Miscellaneous Letters, 
passim. 

IT The National Intelligencer^ September 1, 1821. 
Js Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Vol. IV. }>. 145; Vou Hoist's Con- 
stitutional Ristory of the United States, Vol. IT, p. 550. 



14 

treaty. A limit has now been set for the Louisiana Pur- 
cliase and the date of ratifying this Treaty, 1821, fittingly 
closes our second period of frontier history. 

The work of definition and delimitation had hardly 
been accomplished before the unavoidable course of the 
third period of frontier history begins, and the boundary 
that had been constructed with so much effort immedi- 
ately feels the process of demolition. The first step is 
marked by the land grant of the Spanish government, 
later accepted by the Mexican, to Moses Austin and his 
son Stephen, the first and most important of Texas em- 
presarios. The work of these men was so quickly followed 
up by other claimants — American. Mexican, English, Irisli 
and German — that an American diplomat could well say 
later that the Mexicans certainly could not think much of 
Texas because they were so willing to give it away,'^ and 
we may add ''so many times over". Most of these gran- 
tees introduced American settlers and brought up the 
question of the relations of these immigrants to the estab- 
lished authorities of the country. In a short time there 
occurred the inevitable clash between diverse modes of 
living. The ' ' Fredonian War" of 1826 was but a prelude 
to the Texan struggle for independence which occurred 
ten years later, and led the Mexican government to repent 
of its liberal attitude towards the Americans and, after 
1830, vainly to attempt to put up the barriers which it ha,d 
once incontinently thrown down.-" 

The diplomacy of this period centers around the nat- 
ural and ill-concealed distrust which the Mexican govern- 
ment felt for the United States, despite the debt of grat- 
itude which it owed the latter.^^ Our government, under 

19 Instructions of Clay to Poinsett, American State Papers, Foreign 
delations, Vol. VI. 

20 Lorenzo de Zavala to J. E. Poinsett, February 2, 18:^0, Poivaett 
Papers in the Pennsylvania Historical Society, 

21 Dictamen — por la Comision de Beladones Exteriores, December 



15 

bath Adams and Jackson, made offers to purchase Texas, 
which Mexico positively refused to entertain. Jackson's 
views even irichided California as far south as San Fran- 
cisco Bay, in addition to the territory between the Sabine 
and the Rio Grande, thus emphasizing the inevitable truth 
that if the Louisiana-Texas frontier were once crossed 
American expansion must ultimately extend to the Pacific. 
The efforts of the diplomats to purchase Texas, however, 
proved unavailing, but the contest between Mexico and 
the United States was decided by the frontiersmen, when 
Houston overwhelmed Santa Anna at San Jacinto. 

This event established Texas as an independent re- 
public, and its recognition as such by the United States 
quickly followed. Wliether Texas should remain inde- 
pendent, a sort of buffer State between the United States 
and Mexico, and likewise a vantage ground for English 
and French diplomats, was a question that nine years of 
independence answered in the negative. Van Buren, over- 
whelmed by domestic problems, rejected the first offer of 
Texan annexation. It was thus necessary to survey the 
Louisiana-Arkansas line where it touched Texas ; and this 
was the only portion of our frontier ever definitely 
marked as an international limit. But with the rejection 
of Texas's first offer of annexation that power began a 
policy of coquetting with Great Britain that in the long- 
run forced the issue before the American people." That 
issue was now no longer one of mere national expansion, 
but was so combined with the demoralizing element of 
slavery that the American people were unwilling at first to 
accept even the renewed offer. The election of 1844 decid- 
ed this question, and the subsequent annexation of Texas 

2, 1821, manuscript copy made for J. E. Poinsett, Mexico, 1829; Mexican 
Dispatches, Bureau of Indexes and Archives. 

22 Garrison's The First Stage of the Movement for the Annexation 
of Texas, in American Historical Eevictv, Vol. X, pp. 72-9(5; also Garri- 
son's Westward Extension, pp. 96, 110. 



16 

removed the danger of a Poland on our southwestern bor- 
der. Polk, as the new President elected upon the issue 
of annexation in August, 1845, gave General Taylor the 
order to advance into Texas. In obedience to this order 
Taylor first took up a post on the Nueces, and in the fol- 
lowing spring advanced to the Rio Grande."^ With this 
move the Louisiana-Texas frontier is demolished and the 
American government begins the task of erecting a new 
national boundary far to the southwest. 

23Fulmore'8 The Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, in The 
Quarierlij of the Tr.ros State Hislvriral Asxoriation, Vol. V, pp. 2S-48 ; Von 
Hoist's Constitutional History of the United States, Vol. Ill, pp. 94, 227. 



3477-250 

lot 29 








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